• About Us
  • Background
  • Instructors
  • Sponsors
  • Jay Pinson
• News
• Courses
  • Hands-on High Tech
  • Introductory
  • Advanced
• Registration
  • Introductory
  • Advanced
• Galleries
• Contact

NEW for Summer 2012
The Tech Academy offers its introductory course with a return to a multi-week schedule this summer. TECH I will be two weeks of full day classes (with a supervised hour for lunch). This provides the opportunity to explore a wider range of material in a relatively quick, but comfortable span of time.

Teamwork, in TECH I courses, is apparent in hands-on projects. Generally, two to three students team up, with each student a stakeholder in the team's project. These small groups facilitate discussion, division and accomplishment of significant tasks, and verbal reporting of progress and test results.

We also realize the full day format offers an opportunity to expand the hands-on model of introducing engineering to new topic areas. All students taking TECH I will experience the basics of defining problems, then designing and testing solutions, but will have focus in each class in a different area of Energy, Water and Machinery, or High Technology. We are of the mind that within a two-week session, students will have a more enriching experience while still having “inspirational fun” in this new environment.

Teen wins $100K Award for Nanoparticle Research
In December 2011, the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology awarded Angela Zhang its $100,000 Grand Prize. The 17-year-old Ms. Zhang, a graduate of Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, California, developed a nanoparticle, which destroys cancer stem cells. Her research involved delivery, via nanoparticles, of the drug salinomycin, to a tumor to kill cancer stem cells. In addition, Zhang’s iron oxide and gold nanoparticles were used in non-invasive MRI and photoacoustic imaging techniques of cancer sites.

Competition judge Dr. Tejal Desai, professor, Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, University of California, San Francisco said, “Angela created a nanoparticle that is like a Swiss army knife of cancer treatment.”

Zhang, now a student at the George Washington University, plans to study chemical engineering, biomedical engineering, or physics. Since she started the research in 2009, she has spent more than 1,000 hours researching and developing nanoparticles. Her dream job is to be a research professor.
The Siemens Competition, supported by the Siemens Foundation, is focused on high school student work in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Awardees have had projects as diverse as explaining the birth of stars to human resistance to chemotherapy drugs.

Zhang says she chose the project after looking at treatment survival rates of cancer patients. She won Intel International Science & Engineering Fair (ISEF) Grand Awards for medicine and health science in 2011 and 2010. And, when not studying or doing research, Angela plays golf and the piano